Just finished my first 70.3 yesterday.

This was a New Year’s resolution. So started the training on 3 January 2024.

Background:

Overweight: 106kg / 1,81m tall / 40 years Sport: a few years of swim lessons from 16-18; rugby through all my adolescence and CrossFit between 2021-2022 and stopped almost all 2023 after an injury; a few runs on the belt with the PR at 10k of 52m and half marathon of 2h23

Prepararion: Hired a Portuguese triathlon coach who was a former Olympic athlete (Apulso is the name of their company)

Bought an Orbea M30 road bike and a garmin tacx for indoor cycling.

Trained all three sports during the year being the swim my weakest.

Competition The days before the race although I was tapering I started getting cramps during the day and night. I guess it was stress and nerves.

On the day of the race I got really nervous jumping into the swim and at 1000m I was feeling good but suddenly cramps hit hard on both legs. At that point started crying thinking it was over for me. Took a couple of seconds laying down on the sea. Decided to continue swimming only with arms and sunk in the crams. After a while they were gone. Ended the swim with 2:20 pace with 45’.

On the bike started feeling tired with almost 12km of continued climbing with 700m total elevation. When i pushed the crams came back so had to manage efforts. After the hills start descending and then the course was almost flat. Did good with an average of 27.9 km totaling 3h18.

On the run things went shit, literally. Mentally, divided the run in 4 sets of 4km, then 1 km of easy run and final 5k of push. However, never managed put a good pace. My training average was 5’50 per km and I could not go higher than 6’ or 6’20 per km. I was having stomache and managing not to shit myself. At km 16 had to stop to take a dump. Had to que and do my thing and lost almost 10’. After that could finally do my last 5km at 5’45.

ended with a total of 6h40. Really angry with myself since this total does not represent my training effort. Looking forward to next year to revenge myself and to prepare better the nutrition with different gels which do not mess around with my guts.